When comparing pygame vs GameMaker:Studio Marketplace, the Slant community recommends pygame for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?”pygame is ranked 9th while GameMaker:Studio Marketplace is ranked 62nd. The most important reason people chose pygame is:

Pygame uses Python as its scripting language. Python is widely considered one of the easiest languages to grasp even for beginners.

Pros

Pro

Easy Python syntax

Pygame uses Python as its scripting language. Python is widely considered one of the easiest languages to grasp even for beginners.

Pro

Very easy to understand

The API is very straightforward.

Pro

Good canvas system

Pygame has a drawing system that allows the user to create and draw on an unlimited number of canvases.

Pro

Has a selection of free assetts

About 30 free assets are available.

Pro

Reasonably priced

Most assets are under $5. The more advanced assets can usually go for around $20-$25.

Cons

Con

Very basic

Pretty much just a wrapper for SDL.

Con

Messy documentation

The docs are messy, and some basic functions are infuriating to work out. There's even some places in the documentation where it's clearly wrong about how a method is called/what the arguments really do.

Con

Deathly slow

Con

Outdated

Pygame uses a really old version of SDL and is missing some of the features developed for SDL2.